It’s wild to see folks on bluesky wrestling with the knowledge that they’re unlikely to outlive this dark turn in America. And what that means for them, for their kids. I say “wild” because the responses are predictably dark (nihilistic if not suicidal) or tone-deaf (“You gotta keep fighting!”) but so few have walked through what this really means and… Read More
How to Prepare (Not Prep) for Uncertain Times… and Build a Better World in the Process
The world is absolutely crazy right now, and yes, it’s Trump’s fault: There’s a lot of very understandable free-floating stress (punctuated by moments of terror and glorious protests), but the response I’m seeing is often a reflexive turn toward rugged individualism—Quick! I need to learn how to grow my own food!—a pulling away from community rather than leaning into it…. Read More
SOLAR: How to Get Started and Why You Should
I put solar on my roof three years ago, and since then, I’ve helped plenty of solar-curious friends figure out the options—there are plenty (and you don’t need a PhD in Environmental Engineering to figure them out). GET SOLAR TO SAVE THE PLANET People immediately want to know if solar will save them money, or how long it will take… Read More
Doing Nothing Will Lose You Everything
Folks like to blame the internet for everything, and I’m the first to say Technofeudalists, tech companies, and especially tech billionaires are a real and present danger, but we didn’t get to this stage of society breakdown overnight or even in the last eight years. Neoliberalism and cowboy conservatism have corrupted the culture for decades before the internet. “Greed is… Read More
Microplastics: Reduce Your Exposure
If you’ve been paying attention at all, you’ve seen articles with increasingly horrifying information about how much our world is swimming in pollution, PFAS, chemicals of all kinds, and in particular, microplastics (and nanoplastics). We now have a plastic spoon’s worth in our brains and that’s up 50% in the last eight years, rising with increasing plastic in the environment:… Read More
The Story You Tell Matters
Dammit. My kid had to evacuate from the Palisades fire at 2am last night. They’ve been on red flag watch all week at the edge of the fire and the drop in winds I guess backdrafted the fire toward their apartment. They’re safe in a hotel but my god I hate this. They say everyone will eventually have first-hand experience… Read More
Backup Power for Air Filters + Water
Learning From Climate Disasters I try to learn something out of every climate disaster (sadly, there’s no end of supply of those), but this fire in LA is particularly rough because my kid is like 1/2 mile from the evacuation zone (they’re safe and now that the fire’s maybe being contained, I’m less freaked out). I grew up in CA… Read More
Climate Solutions: Online Thrifting
I’m a big fan of the idea of thrifting, especially for clothes, and I’ve even given my kids thrift-store gift cards (because they were into it as well), but I always ran into a road block personally: finding thrifted clothes in plus sizes was not easy. SOLUTION: ThredUp I’d heard of ThredUp, an online women’s clothing thrift store where you… Read More
A Note on Wildfire Smoke From an Aerosol Scientist
Pittsburgh, Summer 2023 These are the worst fires in Canadian history… and the smoke will be here (in the US, intermittently, depending on which way the wind blows) all summer. I didn’t expect the PhD in aerosol science to come in quite so handy for everyday life, but knowing a lot about tiny particles (aerosols) has been pretty useful the… Read More